"The King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a long time in the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on about change of Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears afloat. Nothing is more improbable than that I should be made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the opportunity, I am now, when far removed from it, decidedly of opinion that it would be the greatest act of folly and absurdity to accept it—to live with foolish people, to do foolish and formal things all day, to hold my tongue, or to twist it into conversation unnatural to me."
King George IV. died on the 26th of June. The accession of William IV., who was supposed to have some tendencies towards Whiggism, greatly stimulated the demand for Parliamentary Reform; and the revolution in France, which dethroned Charles X., gave a strong impetus to the democratic forces in England. Parliament was dissolved on the 24th of July. On the 14th of August Charles Greville wrote, "The elections are still going against the Government, and the signs of the times are all for reform and retrenchment, and against slavery." In writing to congratulate a young Roman Catholic who had been elected for Carlisle, Sydney Smith said—
"I rejoice in the temple which has been reared to Toleration; and I am proud that I worked as a bricklayer's labourer at it—without pay, and with the enmity and abuse of those who were unfavourable to its construction."[98]
The new Parliament met on the 26th of October. On the 2nd of November, in the debate on the Address, the Duke of Wellington made a vehement declaration against Reform. This was the signal for an immense outcry. There were mobs and riots everywhere. The King's projected visit to the City on Lord Mayor's Day was abandoned. The Tory Government were beaten on a motion relating to the new Civil List. "Never was any Administration so completely and so suddenly destroyed; and, I believe, entirely by the Duke's declaration." Lord Grey[99] became Prime Minister, as the head of a Whig administration pledged to Reform. Soon afterwards Sydney Smith wrote to a friend—
"I think Lord Grey will give me some preferment if he stays in long enough; but the upper parsons live vindictively, and evince their aversion to a Whig Ministry by an improved health."
The Reform Bill was brought in on the 1st of March 1831. Sydney thought it "a magnificent measure, as wise as it is bold." Meetings of Reformers were held all over the country to support it. Such a meeting was held at Taunton on the 9th of March, and the Rector of Combe Florey attended and spoke.
"This," he said, "is the greatest measure which has ever been before Parliament in my time, and the most pregnant with good or evil to the country; and, though I seldom meddle with political meetings, I could not reconcile it to my conscience to be absent from this. Every year for this half century the question of Reform has been pressing upon us, till it has swelled up at last into this great and awful combination; so that almost every City and every Borough in England are at this moment assembled for the same purpose and are doing the same thing we are doing."
A great part of the controversy turned on the disfranchisement of the "Pocket Boroughs," and this was a subject which immediately suggested a happy apologue—
"These very same politicians are now looking in an agony of terror at the disfranchisement of Corporations containing twenty or thirty persons, sold to their representatives, who are themselves perhaps sold to the Government: and to put an end to these enormous abuses is called Corporation robbery, and there are some persons wild enough to talk of compensation. This principle of compensation you will consider perhaps, in the following instance, to have been carried as far as sound discretion permits. When I was a young man, the place in England I remember as most notorious for highwaymen and their exploits was Finchley Common, near the metropolis; but Finchley Common, in the progress of improvement, came to be enclosed, and the highwaymen lost by these means the opportunity of exercising their gallant vocation. I remember a friend of mine proposed to draw up for them a petition to the House of Commons for compensation, which ran in this manner—'We, your loyal highwaymen of Finchley Common and its neighbourhood having, at great expense, laid in a stock of blunderbusses, pistols, and other instruments for plundering the public, and finding ourselves impeded in the exercise of our calling by the said enclosure of the said Common of Finchley, humbly petition your Honourable House will be pleased to assign to us such compensation as your Honourable House in its wisdom and justice may think fit.'—Gentlemen, I must leave the application to you….
"The greater part of human improvements, I am sorry to say, are made after war, tumult, bloodshed, and civil commotion: mankind seem to object to every species of gratuitous happiness, and to consider every advantage as too cheap, which is not purchased by some calamity. I shall esteem it as a singular act of God's providence, if this great nation, guided by these warnings of history, not waiting till tumult for Reform, nor trusting Reform to the rude hands of the lowest of the people, shall amend their decayed institutions at a period when they are ruled by a popular monarch, guided by an upright minister, and blessed with profound peace."